2020–21 Pre-Budget Submission

Arts and culture can play their part in the bushfire recovery.

We recognise the 2019-20 bushfires will rightly form a major focus of the 2020-21 Federal Budget. This submission outlines on the role arts and culture can play in the bushfire recovery and rebuilding effort.

We recognise the 2019-20 bushfires will rightly form a major focus of the 2020-21 Federal  Budget. This submission outlines on the role arts and culture can play in the bushfire recovery and rebuilding effort.

Our nation is still reeling from devastating and widespread bushfire attacks on our communities and natural environment. The devastation of life, property, livelihood, and cultural heritage has already been monumental.

The evidence gathered from Australian and international disaster zones show arts and cultural activities have great success in reconnecting affected communities, reducing feelings of  isolation, strengthening people’s connection to place, providing an opportunity for reflection and commemoration, and creating a shared sense of hope and optimism.

We are pleased the Australian Government’s newly announced financial allocations to Local Governments affected by the bushfires includes ‘public activities and events to bring communities together and attract visitors back to affected regions’ as essential for the recovery and renewal of their communities.

Arts and culture-led programs should complement broader recovery strategies.

Just as the head of the newly-created National Bushfire Recovery Agency, Andrew Colvin, is seeking a locally-focused recovery process with community at its heart, cultural initiatives should be designed by, or in close consultation with affected communities, and should respond to local issues, needs and priorities.

ANA acknowledges the broader and diverse benefits culture and creativity provide our nation. We support appropriate resourcing, funding, incentives, and regulation to ensure all Australians have opportunities to contribute to and participate in arts and culture activities which are  proven to:

1. Help individuals and communities create meaning from disaster.
2. Help rebuild communities, enhance social cohesion, and reduce social isolation.
3. Provide a range of physical and mental health benefits.
4. Make places more liveable and increase rural and regional tourist attraction and economic retention.
5. Assist with reclaiming personal, communities and cultural heritage.

This is not the first time our country has succumbed to bushfires, and it won’t be the last. We need to draw on Indigenous peoples’ deep knowledges of managing this land, as well as the insights developed by humanities, arts and cultural researchers and practitioners. This should include supporting efforts to carefully document and evaluate the social and cultural impacts of the 2019-20 fire season and recovery process.

We are urging all local, state, and national disaster recovery agencies to embed cultural and creative activities into their community recovery strategies.

Furthermore, once the urgent priority needs of health, food and shelter are met, to use the healing effects of cultural events and activities to help give people a sense of normality, at a time when things around them seem out of control.

The Federal Government could consider the following options, underpinned by an investment of $11.8M over three years, for implementation in the 2020-21 budget:

1. Allocate $10.5 million over three years towards culture-led programs as part of the recovery process.
2. Ensure bushfire and/or other natural disaster recovery grant programs include eligibility of arts and culture-based initiatives.

And, more specifically, considerations for the Minister of the Arts to:

1. Allocate $400,000 over two years to support pathways for greater strategic
   collaboration between all tiers of government on the clear and direct role of
   arts and culture in disaster recovery efforts.
2. Allocate $900,000 over three years to establish a taskforce to draw on arts
   and cultural expertise in developing holistic disaster recovery, resilience, and
   readiness programs.

In this submission we provide an evidence-base on the role of arts and culture in disaster recovery, outline data on recent federal government public funding trends in arts and culture, and present four recommendations for the 2020-21 Federal Budget.

For the full submission text, download the PDF.